Getting up from my chair I moved the candle into the center of the table and returned to my desk. I shuffled through the papers and pamphlets from days that were long since gone until I found what I was looking for - a bus route map. Surely the bus routes themselves would be of no use, but the map would be. I needed to find the safest, quickest way to the hospital from where I was. Returning to the table I unfolded the map and laid it out before me. It was but a small portion of the city itself; a map of the city in whole would have been bigger than the room I had to unfold it. It was more like a map of my neighborhood within the city.
Looking over the map I calculated the distance between my house and the hospital, running my finger along the bus route I use to take. The bus ride was about thirty or so minutes from the stop at the end of the street to the hospital. I remember taking the bus to see my grandmother during her final days last year, driving would have been quicker, but parking and traffic had made the bus the better choice. My grandmother had passed away before whatever had happened, had happened, but now I had to wrap my head around the fact that everyone I had ever known would be dead and gone now.
Returning to my present dilemma I looked over the map. Walking the same route, the bus took would take closer to an hour but with all the destruction I might be able to cut off time by going through the rubble. Of course, depending on the extent of the destruction beyond my four walls, it could take a lot less time - or a lot more.
There were of course other concerns and problems that might arise in a trip across a bombed-out city. One thing that had been on my mind, more often than not, was what kind of bombs had been dropped on our city. Something inside me ruled out nuclear for while my bunker was made to withstand a blast, a nuclear weapon would have surely torn it apart and if not, the radiation would have seeped in and killed me. Also, Joanne would have likely been killed already, in the bottom of a collapsed hospital where there was less protection than even, I had.
Another concern was others who may have survived the bombs, people who could already be out amongst the rubble. Survival would be the one thing every living person would strive for and without society and laws to keep everyone in line it would be safe to assume some people would be stripped of their civility and gone savage.
The world that was beyond my walls, the one I left so long ago, where my cameras could no longer see, that world was gone. What had replaced that world was a world that I would know little about, except the fact that it had been bombarded and left in ruins. The city I lived in, that I grew up in, it would not be the same as the one I would be walking out into. I would no longer be able to get up and go to work, to visit friends or family, it was all gone.
Inside my mind I played out the what ifs, the possibilities of what could happen once I opened that secured door tomorrow morning; would I be able to survive in this new world? It was another loaded question that weighed heavily on my thoughts. During those long dark nights when I didn’t sleep, and I simply stared into the darkness around me. When sleep eluded me, I had contemplated whether or not I could do the unthinkable - if I could take my own life, if I had too - but I didn’t think I could.
Now there was this voice, it had broken through the static, illuminated the darkness, set my world back onto some sort of uneven grounding. There was another person alive out there, someone who needed my help, if I was willing to take the risks and offer it. The decision was made, and I would be doing just that.
Joanne had set my world back into motion, but my world had been set into a motion that was not there yesterday. Tomorrow when the alarm goes off, when I find myself already awaken from the dark and horrific dreams as was as much a part of my life as breathing was, I would break from my usual routine. I would do what I do every morning up until the point where I turn off the generator. At that point, my day would become unlike every day that I had lived from the moment those air sirens went off until today; I would be unlocking the door that separated the small world I had created within my bunker and step out into a world I no longer knew.
That world that I had left behind would greet me as something different as it will have changed from what it had been since I had left it behind. I would take my first step out of the darkness and back into the light of whatever remained outside, and it would be at that moment that my fight for survival would really begin.
.TWO.
A World Unknown
The alarm went off, buzzing loudly in the silence; I laid in bed and stared up at the darkness above me for a moment before rolling over. I looked at the flashing red letters on the clock, staring at it as if I could will time to go backwards instead of forwards. The alarm had not woken me, it hadn’t since the sound of the air raid sirens did months ago. Every night I would set it for the same time, five in the morning, and my eyes were always open before it went off.
I was trying to get back to a normal routine and each night I would lay my head down hoping to sleep until the alarm went off and each night I woke up before it. Last night I tried to get as much sleep as I could manage, to ready myself for what I was going to do today. I turned in two hours earlier than I would usually, but sleep didn’t find me until close to midnight. Like this morning, last night I laid awake staring at the dark ceiling above me going over the plan I had drawn up before I laid down.
The plan seemed like it would work. Today I would, for the first time in three months, be unlocking the door to my bunker and from there I would head out into a world I knew nothing about anymore, a world that to my knowledge had been dead for some time. Before I closed that door and it sealed shut, I had been an investor and made a lot of money. Fear had crept in little by little with the more money I made until finally I contacted a company about panic rooms and bunkers and had a hybrid of the two installed. The doctor told me that wanting such a thing was nothing more than my paranoia and he started me on a steady regiment of medication that I simply tossed in the kitchen trash when I got home.
No one is going to break in and rob you, the doctor had told me, bombs would not be falling on the city anytime soon, he reiterated - not in our lifetime at least. When was he now I wondered? Probably buried under the rubble of his high-end condo, I wouldn’t get to say I told you so.
That was six months ago; three months before the bombs fell, I had the bunker installed behind a sliding bookshelf in my study. Before this all happened, from time-to-time, I would awake in the middle of the night and move to sleep in the bed in the bunker. It offered a peace of mind I did not understand until that chilly April morning when my paranoid thoughts because a reality. When I awoke from a dream into a nightmare.
The air raid sirens that tore through the silence of what would usually be a quiet Saturday morning set my reflexes on fire. Half-asleep I stumbled from my bedroom, down the stairs to the study and into the bunker, the door locking shut behind me. The doors locks had been electric and initiated at the click of a button, but a manual override was in place in the event that the power went out and the generator would not work.
Sitting up, finally, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and placed my feet on the cold floor, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I should have been exhausted, getting only four hours of sleep but, I felt more awake this morning that I had any morning before this. Every muscle in my body felt alive, whether from the excitement of getting out of this self-made prison; or, the panic of what could happen once I opened that door, I could not tell.
What I did know is that my brain was ablaze with thoughts surrounding the fact that I could very well end up dead today and yet, I was still going through with the plan I had come up with the night before. Joanne was stuck in the basement of the hospital with a broken leg and like some hero, some knight in shining armor, I was going to cross the wastelands of hell to save her. Could I still consider myself a human being, a humane and logic person if I had left her alone, trapped, possibly being the only other living person, in the dark to die?
The part of me that still cared did not think
so, but I wondered if it was all just some selfish motive to no be alone anymore. Was I only doing this because I wanted someone, anyone, to get through this with? I was no hero, no knight in shining armor; before this all happened I, was selfish, why would I suddenly have a selfless reason for anything?
I tried to push the thoughts out of my head. I wasn’t doing this for me; I knew I was wasn’t, I honestly wanted to save this woman from a lonely death in the darkness. The me who had been a selfish pompous ass, he was gone, it was time to be someone else.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself up off the bed and stretched before moving around the table towards the generator. Flicking the switch, I stood and listened to it as it started up. The low hum as the generator came to life was one of only a few familiar sounds now in an almost silent world. Over on my desk the small light grew brighter as power surged through it and the little red button on the radio came to life.
As I stared at the radio I wondered if Joanne would answer back if I keyed the talk button and called out to her. In my gut I knew however I’d hear nothing but the empty static that I had been hearing for months, her radio was likely dead and from her out I would be going blindly into the world.
What if it’s a trap? My unspoken paranoia called to me again making my heart thud in my chest and my breathing come in shallow inhales and exhales. Maybe she is drawing you out, to kill you and take what is yours; take all that is left. They are just unfounded thoughts, thoughts of a man locked in solitude longer than he should have been I told myself as my heart steadied and my breathing leveled out. But the thoughts were only quieted, not completely removed, and I would take steps to ensure my own survival.
Knowing that the radio would only hiss with the sound of empty static I decide not to waste the finite power the generator could produce and left it off. I knew where Joanne was, or at least where she said she was, I simply needed to get there in one piece.
Grabbing an old ratty backpack, I had from my high school days off the hook near my bed I laid it on the table and began stuffing it with food I could eat on the way, or if I got caught outside for the night, and a few bottles of water. I didn’t have much in the way of weapons, except for a small hand axe that I was going to take camping this summer. Why I had chosen to keep it stored in the bunker as opposed to the garage I couldn’t remember.
If all went well on this journey into the unknown world I was about to step out into, I would reach the hospital by early afternoon; if not, I would find myself stuck outside my bunker and away from the only safe place I knew. It took the end of the world to fully realize the saying survival of the fittest; I wondered silently to myself if I was fit enough to survive.
Going through my morning routine I brushed my teeth and showered. I stood for a moment staring into the small mirror that hung on the wall over the sink installed into the bunker attached to the water filtration system. Taking a deep breath, I looked myself in the eyes and nodded, I could do this. I would survive.
Changing into a fresh set of clothes I was finally ready to go. Shouldering the backpack, I had filled with the supplies I needed, including a small first aid kit, I shut down the generator and moved to stand near the bunker door and opened the panel that revealed the manual unlock switch.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly. I knew that once I opened the door, I would be exposed to whatever was outside, that there would be no turning back. Before my camera’s had lost signal and gone dark, I watched in horror as my own home collapsed around me. Regardless of the state of the world I knew I would have to find my way out of the rubble that was my own home before I could go any further.
Gripping the handle of the manual lock release I closed my eyes a moment and whispers a small prayer in case something up there was still listening and watching over the world. I had made my decision turning the handle I listened to the unfamiliar sound of the mechanism releasing. Click, click, click, click, and slowly the door began to open.
The door, as it had been explained to me, was held closed by a magnetic locking system and the manual switch simply reversed the polarities of that magnet allowing the door to be pushed open as easily as one might push open the door at the grocery store. My only concern as I stood ready to push the door the rest of the way, to expose myself to the outside world once again, was that I would not be able to lock the door from the outside. There was no manual way to lock the bunker from the outside. As long as I was outside the bunker, the door would remain unlocked until I returned.
If I was going to use it as an excuse to stay planted where I was now would be the time to do so, but I couldn’t convince myself that leaving another human to die alone was the humane thing to do. Though the door was only open about an inch or so I could feel the panic that was rising up in my throat like vomit that threatened to burst forth. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath through my nose and let it flow slowly out of my mouth.
Opening my eyes, I took a step forward and pushed on the door; pushing it open as far as it would go. Much to my surprise the door only opened about two feet or so and I would be forced to squeeze through the opening. A beam, likely from the second floor, had collapsed with the house and barred the door from opening any further.
Leaning out the door I looked around, the house was in bad shape, but it could have been much worse. Most of the first floor seemed alright and getting through it would be easier than I had thought. It looked as though I would be able to get to the front door, sucking in my gut from time-to-time, but it didn’t look like I would have to do much crawling.
As I stepped out into the rubble, I got a better look at the damage that had been done to my home, it was only then that I realized I had been holding my breath.
Slowly, in small bursts, I sniffed at the air in the house. It smelt of death and decay, likely from the rotting of dead bodies which there would surely be plenty of, but nothing else. Finally filling the satisfactory of my paranoid thoughts, I let myself breath, coughing at the dust cloud that had released when I pushed on the door. Except for the dust, the air was no less breathable than it had been before the world had gone to hell in a poorly made handbasket.
While getting out of my house proved easier than I had thought, more than once I was forced to backtrack as I found myself dead ended by rubble from above or huge gaping holes leading to the basement. Eventually I was forced to climb up onto through a hole in the ceiling, up a pill of broken floorboard and fallen beams to the second floor and out the shattered bedroom window onto what was left of the roof of my collapsing front porch.
From the collapsing front porch, it was a simple six-foot jump down to the ground below. I landed, nearly twisting my ankle, on the now dead grass of what had been my well-kept lawn. The young man who I had paid to come tend it twice a week was likely dead with the rest of the neighborhood and the yard was now beyond repair.
Dusting off my hands I looked around at the what had become of the neighborhood I had once called home and it seemed a safe bet that anyone without some form of safe room, much like my own, had perished in the attacks. Houses on either side of the street had either collapsed in on themselves or been blown apart in part or entirely. Cars, which would have lined the street and driveways that fateful morning were everywhere in various conditions, many were charred their gas tanks having exploded. In essence cars with a full tank of gas when the bombs came down were likely small bombs of their own.
I tried to focus on the destroyed homes and car because I knew the moment I did not I would see things I had tried so desperately to block out. Scanning the area, it didn’t take long for my eyes to lock on the first of many things I had not wanted to see. Brad Michaels, or what was left of my neighbors from two doors down, laid next to the blacken wreck that had once been his pickup truck. Brad worked early mornings and would have been leaving home just as the bombs had started dropping. When I was able to finally shift my eyes away from the remains of Brad the shattered neighbor revealed the rest of the bodies my eyes had ref
used to see.
Charred, fully or partially, remains were scattered across lawns, in driveways and on the street. These had been the men, women, and children who had lived in the neighborhood, they had been people, single or with families, who had tried to escape the inevitable. The bodies, or pieces of them were scattered, blown around like lawn ornaments ripped from a front yard during a windstorm.
Turning back to look at my own house, trying to clear my vision of the carnage that lay behind me I was faced with something much worse. Sticking out from beneath the half collapsed front porch of my home was the lower half of a long since dead body. Someone it would seem had cared enough to seek me out to warn me of what was happening or had hoped I would have an answer to the question - where is it safe. By the time they would have reached my home, I would have been locked away inside my bunker unable to hear them, had they managed to pound on my door before the porch collapsed.
Shaking my head, I lowered my eyes to the ground, feeling the sting of tears. I didn’t want to think about who had come banging on my door that morning only to lose their life beneath the collapsing porch. Had they died instantly, or did they suffer? The question I tried to push away continued to resurface and would haunt me for longer that I could know.
Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand I reached into my backpack and pulled out the half-folded map I had taken from desk and opened it, refolding it so it showed only the area between my house and the hospital.
The Stenson house, which was nothing more than a pile of stone and wood, glass and broken belongings, seemed to be the quickest way to cross over out of my neighborhood and onto the main street. Cutting across their property would also cut off almost twenty minutes had I been forced to walk around.
Leaving behind my own house, trying to keep my eyes ahead of me, I started down the street towards where I would cut through. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else had managed to escape this devastation; or, how far has this spread. Was it just our city that had been hit? Or just major cities? Was our country in ruins or did the attacks span the entirety of the world?
Survival Series (Book 1): Survival Page 2